To Skate Or Not To Skate
I took my 13-year-old daughter to an indoor skateboard park a couple of weeks ago. It’s an activity she’s really into and enjoys. The skateboard park is pretty cool. It’s located inside a repurposed mall that I used to frequent as a teenager. I’ll drop her off with a friend, watch them skate for a little bit, and walk around the mall while soaking up the nostalgia.
We went on a weekday evening instead of the regular Saturday afternoon time slot. On Saturday afternoons, the skatepark is overflowing with kids my daughter’s age and younger. On weekday evenings, it’s full of college guys and mid-twenty somethings. The tempo, energy, and atmosphere of the two sessions couldn’t be more different. My daughter and her friend picked up on this right away. Instead of jumping right into the fray like they do on Saturday afternoons, they became wallflowers and hung about, intimidated by the level of skating and afraid to get run over. It’s not that the older crowd, which was all male, were jerks or anything of the sort. They were just a bit more intense and aggressive in their skating. They were under no obligation to create a safe space for two middle school kids just learning how to ride a skateboard without falling off.
As I watched from a nearby bench, I observed my daughter and her friend trying to get up the courage to jump on their boards. It was endearing. I also was keenly aware of the crowd of young adult men around them. I studied them as they interacted with each other, attempted tricks off poles and ramps and benches scattered around the park. Then I noticed it. And once I noticed it, it became more apparent. The group of young men, dressed in skater clothes accessorized with nonchalance and rebellion, were equally as afraid as my daughter, if not more so.
Behind the teasing and shoving and hollering and egging on, there was a subtle hint of insecurity. I saw in the one who kept joking with his friends that he was going to ride his board in a minute, they could go first. The other one who attempted a fairly difficult trick but failed to land, and got up to check his board as if it had malfunctioned midair. Another who landed a trick and seemed relieved to have done so. And yet another who lost his board and chased it almost the full length of the park. The theme was simple—don’t mess up, don’t look like a fool, you’ll never live it down.
I found this so interesting. Regardless of skill level, none of these guys wanted to look less than perfect in front of each other. It didn’t matter that it was a random Thursday evening at an indoor skatepark at an old mall in the dead of winter. That it wasn’t a pro competition. That it was a sport made popular by the most relaxed and laidback adolescent population from the 1990s. No matter what the circumstance or setting, we’ve been socially conditioned to believe that mistakes and missteps are unacceptable, worthy of ridicule, and make us “less than.”
Part of the human experience is the inability to be perfect. We trip and fall. We say the wrong things. We get facts wrong or remember them incorrectly. We misspell words and mixup phrases. We make mistakes, quite regularly I might add, all the time. The smartest people in the world do dumb things. The most eloquent speakers fumble their words. The best athletes make bad plays. It turns out, celebrities are humans, too—they make mistakes as well. The best skateboarder in the world falls off the skateboard now and again. It’s who we are, no matter our talents, intellect, or social standing. I’d even venture to say that it’s one of the more beautiful aspects of being human. If we own our mistakes rather than hide from them or be embarrassed by them, it normalizes them and creates a space of openness and transparency. Imagine if we did that from the start? Making mistakes would be applauded, acceptable, and encouraged. How else does one learn and grow?
I empathized with the guys at the skatepark that night. They were just there to blow off some steam and have a little fun with their friends, and insecurity still tagged along for the ride. It can feel inescapable sometimes—this fear of messing up. But when you look around and see that everyone has it in some way, shape, or form, it becomes less powerful. It becomes kind of ridiculous, actually.
My daughter and her friend eventually made it off the wall. And a couple of the guys even showed them how to “drop in” on a ramp so they had more control. At one point, they blended in with the rest of the skaters, insecurities and all. I left and went for a quiet stroll around the mall, marveling at how little life lessons can be found in some of the most unexpected places.